Re: [-empyre-] cultural, organizational and technological performance

["Michelle Riel" <michelle_riel@csumb.edu>]

To clarify, I don't  necessarily see them as new or additional categories, but to be mindful that we already have an understanding of performance as operating in these ways  - culturally, organizationally, and technologically.  For example, to think
of technological  performance can be to rate an object's utility by some criteria. When I say "How is my computer performing? It seems a little sluggish, I may have too many images open and the vram is maxed out." We understand this to mean that I
am discussing the utilitarian aspect of the computer's functionality. When I say the "freeway performs" in Pall Thayer's Autodrawn work in which he has created a software framework through which to capture the random activities of cars passing along
the freeway and conceptualizes it in relation to the artists sketch exercise, I am attributing criteria of performance to an object, technology, or system. I transfer affect to an object; I see the computationally embedded and technologized world in
which I live as alive, able to engage and enact. The "what" of the engagement / enactment is that  tenuous realm that we are currently pondering: performance without a body, responsiveness, or performance, of once inanimate objects that now sense
and communicate. 

Since we may not usually consider performance beyond the cultural referent, my intention was to propose thinking more expansively about performance as more than a sited event, perhaps a condition or state, since I often also use performance and
performativity interchangeably (which is probably a sloppy practice and I should be more rigorous). As far as examples, this broader perspective of performance is reflected in many of the examples and artists referenced thus far (Pall Thayer as
mentioned, Chris Salter, Diller + Scofidio, Teran and Mann, Usman Haque) in which objects, environments, and systems perform.

Michelle -


soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> writes:
>Michelle R. --
>
>"Perhaps the multivalent concept of performance as cultural, organizational
>and technological can inform a typology of current networked practice."
>
>
>Can you give us an idea of what this means?  A new way of categorizing types
>of networked practice...  what would you put in each of the above
>categories?  And wouldn't one spend hours arguing what work belongs where?
>
>-- Helen
>
>
>
>on 7/14/05 6:28 PM, Michelle Riel at michelle_riel@csumb.edu wrote:
>
>> In Jon McKenzie?s book Perform or Else he presents a case study approach
>> demonstrating the current cultural use and understanding of ?performance?.  He
>> cites the parallel developments emergent from the 50?s and 60?s of Marcuse?s
>> claim that
>> post-industrial societies are ruled by the ?performance principle? (oppressive
>> / repressive sublimation, or conformance to social acceptance), concurrent
>> with the rise of both a theatrical concept of performance from ritual and
>> social interaction
>> and the development in art that would become performance art.
>> 
>> Specifically, he looks at three facets of performance: the efficacy of
>> ?cultural performance? as in the performance of dancers, singers, musicians
>> and actors in the traditional performing arts and experimental art; the
>> efficiency of ?organizational
>> performance? such as workplace productivity of companies, business management,
>> economic power; and the effectiveness of ?technological performance? such as
>> the technological functionality of objects or systems.
>> 
>> While seemingly disparate, and certainly broad, expanding performance to be
>> inclusive of these cultural uses enables us to understand as ?performance?
>> buildings made of fog and tables that follow you, tools that are sociable and
>> engage you to become
>> performative through their use and, the more familiar notion of performance,
>> interactions by artists with technology in an event presented to others who
>> observe.  
>> 
>> But unlike Schwitters? imagined Merz conception, the blog is chronicling
>> _current practice_ which, like the openness of its premise (any live event
>> that is network enabled), means that there is a really broad range of realized
>> work. From lo-fi to
>> DIY art to academic and commercial institutionally funded research to
>> commercial tools and experiences. And an equally broad range of practitioners
>> from artists and performers, of course, to engineers, computer scientists,
>> social scientists,
>> humanities researchers, architects, and undoubtedly others.
>> 
>> One aspect of the blog as a database of works is to note patterns of practice
>> as a means to understand the expanding definition of performance. The breadth
>> of this scope points out that both definitions of terms (performance,
>> liveness, embodiment,
>> presence, agency, etc.) as well as a typology are needed.  We began with the
>> categories Telematic, Locative, Wearable, and Environments. Perhaps the
>> multivalent concept of performance as cultural, organizational and
>> technological can inform a
>> typology of current networked practice.